State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin says that there is rightful indignation of journalists deprived of the right to work with objective information

State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin

MOSCOW, July 09. /ITAR-TASS/. Many Europeans do not share the official stance of their countries on the situation in the south-east of Ukraine, Russian State Duma Speaker Sergei Naryshkin said in an interview with the Rossiiskaya Gazeta daily issued on Wednesday.

“We are seeing in countries of Europe a reaction of civil societies, as well as rightful indignation of journalists deprived of the right to work with objective information,” he said. “Protesting against covert censorship, they begin addressing questions not only to their own, but also to Kiev authorities, whose media outlets also have to lie about the developments in their own country,” the speaker said.

“This is not to mention opposition forces in European parliaments (and by the way two former speakers of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe) that continue maintaining an open dialogue with our country despite all official bans, and often voice the point of view opposite to that of their authorities,” he said in the article.

“We have heard these voices in France and in Serbia, where we have been on official visits, as well as in spring after the so-called sanctions were imposed against our deputies. And also quite recently - at the third international parliamentary forum in Moscow,” he said.

“Let me add that signals are coming from the United Nations that for a long time tried to keep silence, which testify to an emerging turning point in the world public opinion,” Naryshkin said in the article.

Poroshenko settlement plan for south-east Ukraine

Naryshkin said that the settlement plan for south-eastern Ukraine proposed by Ukraine’s President Petro Poroshenko remained exclusively decorative.

“We clearly see that Poroshenko’s peace plan, which is so much touted in the West, has been exclusively decorative and has got nothing to do with real peace settlement. It turned out to be the same ‘cover operation’ for the ongoing aggression as the three-day extension of the truce, which made it possible (for Kiev) to regroup and re-equip the troops, and after that deliver even a more ruthless strike against the eastern territories,” Naryshkin wrote in an article published by the Rossiyskaya Gazeta daily on Wednesday.

“Poroshenko personally issued an order to resume fire the next morning after quite meaningful and seemingly successful four-sided talks,” Naryshkin said, noting that Poroshenko was also inconsistent in meeting his election promises.

“Besides, Ukraine’s newly-elected president has, under the quiet, changed his own election promises, concerning the region’s greater independence, beyond recognition. Under a hypocritical slogan of “Ukraine’s unity”, he wants to deprive millions of people of any right to solve their own life matters, let alone the right, which is universally recognized in international law, to write and speak in their own language,” Naryshkin went on to say.

“A provision on special status of the Russian language included in (Ukraine’s) new draft Constitution should be translated as absolute refusal to recognize it as a full-fledged language,” the Russian State Duma speaker stressed.